This book - Centro de Estudos Anglicanos

STANTON, ELIZABETH CADY 299Johnstown Academy and at Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary, she soughtto practice law, but as a woman she was denied a legal career. In 1840 she marriedHenry Stanton, an abolitionist and social reformer. The couple removed the word“obey” from their wedding service, and after the ceremony, they sailed to Englandto attend the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention. The decision by that conventionto bar Lucretia Mott and other American women from taking their seats as delegateseventually led to the creation of the British and American women’s rightsmovements. After their return to the United States, the Stantons lived in variousplaces during the first years of their marriage. Despite remaining at home to raiseher children, Elizabeth became friends with many of the leading women in theantislavery movement at that time.In 1847 the Stantons moved to Seneca Falls, New York, and a year later Elizabethinitiated the call for a women’s rights convention. At that meeting, whichwas held on July 19–20, 1848, she read her famous Declaration of Sentiments,which was modeled after the Declaration of Independence. When women in otherlocales learned about the Seneca Falls convention, petitions both for propertyrights and for suffrage began to circulate, and conventions of women’s rightsadvocates soon became commonplace. Elizabeth met Susan B. Anthony in 1851,and they were soon working together as leaders in the cause of women’s rights.Although they were often denounced and ridiculed for their views, Stanton andAnthony kept up the pressure. Thus, when the Republicans gained control of theNew York legislature in 1861, the two women won significant revisions in thestate’s laws governing the status of married women.During the Civil War, Stanton brought women’s rights meetings to a halt becauseshe thought women could play an even more important role in the politicalmobilization of the North. In 1863 she helped organize the Women’s Loyal NationalLeague and strongly supported efforts to abolish slavery by constitutionalamendment—a movement that eventually culminated in the ratification of theThirteenth Amendment in 1865. During Reconstruction, however, the alliancebetween abolitionists and women’s rights advocates fell apart. When Republicanleaders pressing for universal manhood suffrage refused to support suffrage forwomen, Stanton gave her backing to Democratic politicians, who declared thatno black man should be allowed to vote until white women had first gained thatright. Stanton herself lectured against the Fifteenth Amendment, and she insinuatedthat the enfranchisement of black men would endanger the safety of whitewomen. Although she never repudiated these openly racist attacks on AfricanAmericans, she later mounted a vigorous suffrage campaign on behalf of “NationalProtection for National Citizens,” arguing that the voting rights of all Americansshould be guaranteed by an amendment to the federal constitution.Although Stanton had been raised a conservative Presbyterian, she attendedTrinity Episcopal Church while living in Seneca Falls. In the 1880s, however,she increasingly turned against the churches, which she believed needed to beheld accountable for perpetuating the oppression of women. “The only religioussect . . . that has recognized the equality of woman,” she observed, “is the Spir-